"Benches are just very wide chairs in my opinion. I don’t like hoping something is going to work so I always look at existing benches and take measurements." Build Deck Bench Seating Checklist A bench is just a series of small walls Copy dimensions from favorite chairs in your home WATCH cheeky building video below […]
STIHL Electric Chain Saw Review I took ownership of a STIHL electric chain saw about three months ago. It's the battery-powered MSA 120 C. Over those ninety days, I've used the saw extensively on all sorts of different jobs around my home. To the best of my knowledge, I'm one of a very few tool […]
How to Clean a Vitamix Blender I get questions all the time about how to clean a Vitamix blender. (August 23, 2017 Newsletter) But the most interesting thing I've received is an email from Molly a year or so ago. Read this: "I never, never write manufacturers.... Did I say never??? I have a Vitamix […]
I'm sitting at gate 54A here in the San Francisco airport waiting to get back home. I've been out here on the Left Coast of the USA for over two weeks. Two weeks ago, I was just starting a very interesting tour of the KEEN shoes and boots factory in Portland, Oregon. CLICK HERE to […]
Bath Remodel Pictures Matt works for Ranger Roofing, a roofing company in Oklahoma. Someone hired his company to complete a bathroom remodeling project. I'm not quite sure how a roofing company got into bath remodeling, but you can be the judge if they should get back up in the hot sun or stay inside! Free […]
If you're a new subscriber in the past two weeks, this is not a normal newsletter. Don't judge my newsletter on what you're about to see. I'm in the middle of an extended vacation that had a business meeting last week in Portland, OR, and in six days I have another one in San Francisco. […]
KEEN Footwear Factory Tour The first week of August, 2017, I found myself in Portland, Oregon. As fate would have it, I arrived in the midst of an historic heat spell. I had been invited to visit the KEEN Utility factory, headquarters and epic KEEN Garage where they have a retail store in downtown Portland's […]
KEEN Footwear Factory Tour I had the distinct pleasure to attend a media event at the KEEN Utility factory in Portland, OR in August 2017. I've been on many factory tours over the past twenty years and this was the BEST ONE ever. First, it's a smaller factory with about eighty people working diligently […]
Below are deck materials for a 12 x 10 foot deck at nearly ground level. These prices listed for the decking materials were taken in August 1996, in Cincinnati, Ohio.
IMPORTANT UPDATE: This column was authored in 2017. It's now 2025. The polymeric sand I used on my patio failed within four years. It looked good for about three years, but then it started to succumb to the harsh New England winters. I never pressure-washed the patio, so that's not the reason for the […]
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